The West End is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, bounded generally by Cambridge Street to the south, the Charles River to the west and northwest, North Washington Street on the north and northeast, and New Sudbury Street on the east. Beacon Hill is to the south, North Point (Cambridge, Massachusetts) is across the Charles River to the north, Kendall Square is in Cambridge across the Charles River to the west, and the North End of Boston is to the east.
A late 1950s urban renewal project razed a large Italian and Jewish enclave and displaced over 20,000 people in order to redevelop much of the West End and part of the neighboring Downtown neighborhood. After that, the original West End became increasingly non-residential, including part of Government Center (formerly Scollay Square) as well as much of Massachusetts General Hospital and several high rise office buildings. More recently, however, new residential buildings and spaces, as well as new parks, have been appearing across the West End.
Geography
The West End occupies the northwest portion of the Shawmut Peninsula. Much of the land on which the neighborhood lies is the product of land reclamation. Beginning in 1807, parts of Beacon Hill were used to fill in a small bay and mill pond that separated Beacon Hill and the West End from the North End. Today the neighborhood consists primarily of superblocks containing high rise residential towers. The West End borders the Charles River between the Longfellow Bridge and the Charles River Dam Bridge. The Charlesbank Playground runs along the bank of the river, but is separated from the rest of the neighborhood by Storrow Drive, a large crosstown expressway.
Early days
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Boston's waterfront and North End were becoming overcrowded, and many of the city's well off residents took the opportunity to develop the area now known as the West End. At that time, the area was separated from the older neighborhoods by a small bay. The architect Charles Bulfinch was responsible for much of Boston's architectural character at the time, and played a large part in this new development of the West End.
Bulfinch spent much of his early career in the 1790s designing mansions, many of them in the West End and other Boston neighborhoods.O'Connor, Thomas H., The Hub: Boston Past and Present, Northeastern University Press Boston, 2001. One of the most famous examples of these was the first Harrison Gray Otis House. This historic building was the first of three that Bulfinch designed for the affluent lawyer Harrison Gray Otis, and is one of the few buildings that survived Urban Renewal in the West End.
Other West End landmarks designed by Bulfinch were the Massachusetts General Hospital's domed granite building, built 1816–1825 (today known as the Bulfinch Pavilion), and the West End Market on the corner of Grove and Cambridge Streets. Constructed in 1810, this historic market did not survive the area's redevelopment in the 1950s.Whitehill, Walter Muir, and Kennedy, Lawrence W., Boston: A Topographical History 3rd Ed, Harvard University Press, 2000. Bulfinch's architecture of newer large brick buildings with gardens attracted many of Boston's wealthier citizens. By 1810, the West End was inhabited by wealthy business men, merchants, and lawyers. Many would soon move to the nearby Beacon Hill, turning the West End into an African American community and stopping point for new immigrants.
Another early West End building is the Charles Street Jail (1851), designed by Gridley James Fox Bryant, which was renovated into the Liberty Hotel.
West End House The West End House was originally founded in 1906 as a community center for young immigrant boys. The community center's founding was funded by Boston-area philanthropist and investment banker James J. Storrow. The West End House served as a center for social and community life in Boston's West End neighborhood for over 60 years, opening its doors to young immigrant boys from a myriad of different ethnic and national backgrounds. The urban renewal plans of the 1950s and 1960s, which saw the near complete upheaval of the original West End neighborhood, negatively affected the community center's membership since much of the neighborhood's immigrant population was subsequently displaced. In 1971, thanks in large part to the fundraising efforts of alumni of the original West End House, the West End House was relocated to Allston-Brighton and reimagined into a modernized co-ed center for youth development with a focus on the arts, academics, athletics, and leadership.
Ethnic history
African American history
In the early 19th century the West End, along with Beacon Hill's north slope, became an important center of Boston's African American community. The mostly affluent and white inhabitants of Beacon Hill's south slope were strongly supportive of abolitionism. This encouraged middle and working class free African Americans to move into the nearby North slope and West End. After the Civil War, the West End continued to be an important center of African American culture. It was one of the few locations in the United States at the time where African Americans had a political voice. At least one black resident from the West End sat on Boston's community council during every year between 1876 and 1895.
Immigration From the second half of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, Boston's West End became a home to many different immigrant groups. The wealthy and middle class business men were almost entirely gone, but many African Americans remained in the neighborhood, making it one of Boston's most diverse.Gans, Herbert, J., The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans, Free Press, 1962. . Among the many immigrant groups contributing to this melting pot were Armenians, Greeks, Irish, Lebanese, Italians, Jews, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Syrians, Ukrainians and many other Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans. It was during this period that the neighborhood's population reached its peak at approximately 23,000 residents O'Connor, Thomas H., Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, Northern University Press, 1993.
As a result of this immigration, the religious make-up of the neighborhood changed dramatically. Protestant churches moved away or shut down, to be replaced by Catholic churches and synagogues. For example, the old West Church, built in 1806 closed in 1892 due to lack of congregation. It reopened two years later as a library to better serve the new community.
Irish
Irish immigrants were among the first to settle the West End. After briefly passing through the North End, many Irish families moved on to the West and South ends. The West End soon developed a thriving Irish community.
Later on, this community became associated with Martin Lomasney. Lomasney, also known as "the Mahatma", was the ward boss of Boston's Ward 8 located in the West End. He was well known for taking care of the community that had developed there, especially the Irish families.
Early in Lomasney's career, he established the Hendricks Club in the heart of the neighborhood. The Hendricks began as a social club and gathering place, but later turned into the center of Lomasney's political machine. It was from here that he began to provide social services, charity, and shelter for poor immigrants. In return, he was able to drum up votes and support from much of the neighborhood.O'Connor, Thomas H., Boston A to Z, Harvard University Press, 2000.
Jewish community By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Irish immigration had slowed and Eastern European Jews began to immigrate into the West End in large numbers. Many came to escape persecution in Lithuania, Russia, and Poland. They formed a community in the West End and became a significant part of the population by 1910. They made their home in the neighborhood, constructing health centers, libraries, labor unions, loan societies, orphanages, and synagogues. Actor Leonard NimoyBenarsky, M. Leonard Nimoy, Boston Native, Dies at 83, Jamaica Plain Patch, February 27, 2015, 11:01am was raised in this community.
The new Boston Synagogue, the 1919 Vilna Shul, and the African Meeting House which was the home of Anshi Lubuvicher from 1900 to 1972 are the only surviving West End synagogues. The Boston Synagogue is a newly merged congregation; the Vilna Shul at 16 Philips Street, which was outside the urban renewal demolition area, is now a synagogue museum, and the African American Meeting House is now a church museum. Over the Vilna Shul's ark is the double hand symbol for the Kohanim, the ancient Israelite priests, which was the source for the Star Trek Vulcan salute. The Vilna Shul also has pews salvaged from the former Twelfth Baptist Church on which once sat former African American slaves and volunteers in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment popularized by the movie Glory. The Vilna was the last of the approximately seven West End synagogues to stay open, closing in 1985.
Urban renewal
By the 1950s, Boston's West End had turned into a working poor residential area with scattered businesses with small meandering roads much like the North End. According to most residents, the West End was a good place to live at this time. The once overcrowded neighborhood was in the process of "deslumming"Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, page 287. Random House Inc. NY, 1961. . and the population had dropped to around 7,500 residents.Anderson, Martin, The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal 1949–1962, The MIT Press, 1964. By the end of the 1950s, over half of the neighborhood would be completely leveled to be replaced with residential high rises as part of a large scale urban renewal project.
Political background The large-scale renewal of the West End was first proposed in the 1930s by Nathan Strauss Jr., among others, shortly after the National Housing Act of 1934 was passed. The neighborhood was considered a slum by wealthy Bostonians who did not live there. The working class residents of the West End felt strong ties to the community and so the plan would not become politically feasible until the 1950s.Weaver, Robert C., Dilemmas of Urban America, Harvard University Press, 1966. .
When the John B. Hynes administration came into power in 1949 city officials recognized that the federal government's Housing Act of 1949 presented the opportunity to remake parts of Boston. The Boston Housing Authority (BHA) held responsibility for developing Boston's urban renewal plans and was designated the city's local public authority for federal funds.O'Connor, Thomas H., Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, Northern University Press, 1993. pp. 126–27.
Implementation
As part of a plan to create a "New Boston", the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) and its 1957 successor, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), redeveloped neighborhoods throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The New York Streets section of the South End was redeveloped before the West End, and in the 1960s Scollay Square was leveled to create the brutalist Government Center afterwards. The motivation behind these projects was to replace neighborhoods that had been classified as slums with neighborhoods that would bring in increased tax revenues. It is estimated that before the renewal project, the tax revenue from the West End was approximately $546,000 a year.